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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29876667">Faceless</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGrinningKitten/pseuds/TheGrinningKitten'>TheGrinningKitten</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>His Story [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Undertale (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>And it never ends well, Error tries, Gen, Multiple Errors, Multiple Inks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:35:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,692</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29876667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGrinningKitten/pseuds/TheGrinningKitten</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <b>A note from the translator:</b>
</p>
<p>"His Story" is actually a series of stories in nature. However, originally, all of its stories were posted as one single fic, but due to AO3's capabilities, the translated stories are separated into actual fics under the same series.</p>
<p>The preface by the author (which was originally a separate chapter) is available on <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124066">the main page of the "His Story" series</a>.</p>
<p>Thank you for your attention and enjoy!</p>
    </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Error &amp; Blue, Error &amp; Ink</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>His Story [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124066</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            A translation of

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/771573">Его история (История 6 - Безликий)</a> by Elena Troitskaya (Sariko).
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <b>A note from the translator:</b>
</p>
<p>"His Story" is actually a series of stories in nature. However, originally, all of its stories were posted as one single fic, but due to AO3's capabilities, the translated stories are separated into actual fics under the same series.</p>
<p>The preface by the author (which was originally a separate chapter) is available on <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124066">the main page of the "His Story" series</a>.</p>
<p>Thank you for your attention and enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Special thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn">Neutralcybertrn</a> for beta-reading this chapter!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was staring into the abyss. The abyss was staring back into him.</p><p>The abyss had always been powerful yet merciful, so when he slumped to his knees, fell to his side, and his eyes slowly started to go out, it left. Error lost once again.</p><p> </p><p>Actually, the name ‘Error’ hadn’t been his for a while. And he was inclined to believe that it had never been his real name. He was Sans. Just another Sans, who wasn’t all that different from all the others. Just like many, he tried to stop resets, and just like many, he failed spectacularly.</p><p>At first, he ended up inside the Save Screen. Oh, he could barely remember anything from that period of his life. A life as a prisoner, forced to slowly go insane from watching a chain of genocides, wasn’t something one wanted to remember. He must’ve snapped one day and destroyed his world somehow.</p><p>Did he regret doing it? No. His world was doomed to suffer in an endless hellish cycle, and he simply set it free. That was the freedom he wanted to grant to the rest of the worlds. That’s when he became Error.</p><p>And then… And then there was Ink, the lengthy rivalry of their ideas and his defeat. Just like he’d failed to stop resets back in the day, now he failed to defeat Ink.</p><p>He wasn’t killed — only turned into a prisoner, chained up and stripped of magic. Then one day they decided it was too cruel to keep a mad, rabid dog chained up. The comparison made him want to laugh and cry, since Error had never been mad.</p><p>‘Are you going to put me to sleep?” he asked then.</p><p>“Yes,” was the unpleasantly surprising answer.</p><p>It’s hard to convey the storm of emotions that arose inside his soul then. He’d gone through so much, done so much, wanted to do so much yet and absolutely didn’t want to die. Especially not by being put down like a dog. But no matter how much he “barked”, the guardians did what they deemed necessary.</p><p>Though they did replace eternal sleep with a regular one — only making it last for ages. Error had no idea whether to thank or curse Ink for his kindness.</p><p>“I really am sorry, Error,” Ink said the day before the “execution”. “I tried to be your friend. I tried to understand you, accept you as you are. But I can’t accept all of the crimes you’ve committed.”</p><p>“Then why won’t you just kill me?” growled the destroyer, chained to a wall of the basement.</p><p>Ink lowered his eyes: “I still believe that you can change, become a  different person.”</p><p>“And how am I supposed to do that while sleeping wakelessly?”</p><p>Ink didn’t respond. He turned away, ready to leave.</p><p>“And what if I was right? What if the Multiverse would perish if the worlds aren’t erased? Then what?”</p><p>Ink stilled for just a moment, then let out a heavy sigh and left the basement.</p><p>The next morning he came back with Dream in tow.</p><p>The guardian of dreams looked out of his depth. He kept failing to summon his magic and finish the nasty task at hand. Ink did nothing to help him, looking away.</p><p>“Are you going to put your brother to sleep as well?” the destroyer snapped angrily.</p><p>Dream’s hands shook even harder as he broke down completely and ran out of the basement. Ink went to bring him back, frowning at the destroyer before he left.</p><p>They only managed to finish what they’d started an hour later.</p><p>The last thing Error remembered before falling into oblivion, was the warmth of Dream’s hands on his face. Then Ink picked him up, carried him to his guest room and laid him on the bed.</p><p>Error kept fighting the inevitable until the very end, but sleep was slowly taking over his mind. Soon the black skeleton went limp and lost track of reality. He thought he heard Ink say something to him, but the destroyer didn’t care about whatever he had to say anymore.</p><p>He’d been betrayed, and now he was simply waiting for the time the eternity had granted him to run out so that his body could turn to dust. He saw pleasant dreams sometimes: he could just imagine Ink forcing the prince of positivity to provide those for him.</p><p>And he waited. And waited. And waited. Until…</p><p>“Error, wake up!!!”</p><p> </p><p>It took quite a bit of effort, but Error managed to get up. He couldn’t see Nothing anywhere. The one who’d devoured his world had “escaped” again. Which meant that he needed to find him. There was a residential area behind him. It called for him to join its hustle and bustle, remember what his life was like before Zero Infinity — a life full of light and hopes.</p><p>The hopes came crashing down, the light went out — and Error didn’t even turn around. He stepped into the darkness, determined like a maniac with a goal. He was going to catch up to Nothing, and this time he wouldn’t let it devour another vibrant Multiverse.</p><p>“I’m ridiculous, huh?” he asked the amalgamation.</p><p>The creature hurried to hide its tentacles, letting him pass. It remained silent, unwilling to share the thoughts of the billions of creatures it had consumed. Its silence didn’t bother the black skeleton though.</p><p>“I used to be a destroyer,” he said, “and now I’m maintainer. I think it’s funny.”</p><p>Sometimes he saw lights glimmering in the darkness. Sometimes pathlighters passed by him — alone or with new residents in tow. Whenever he came across them, Error couldn’t help but think of his past.</p><p> </p><p>Error had no idea what was happening beyond the walls of the room he was gathering dust in. He had no idea how many years had passed. In the brief moment of self-awareness, he thought of the silliest things. For example, he could remember the Creators granting Ink a few children. They must’ve all grown up by now. Or sometimes he thought about his puppet collection. Who did it belong to now? And what was happening in Undernovela? And who was going to destroy worlds now? And what would happen if no one did?</p><p>He got to find out the answer to the last question immediately after waking up.</p><p>“Error, wake up!!!”</p><p>The awakening didn’t come easy. He’d been stuck inside dreams for so long that he had trouble telling them from reality now.</p><p>“Error! Wake up!” A hysterical voice was trying to get through to him. He could barely recognize the owner of the voice: Ink had never allowed himself to be this emotional before.</p><p>“Ink?”</p><p>“Come on! Get up!”</p><p>“I can’t. My body won’t move,” Error slurred. His arms and legs felt like lead, he could hardly keep his eyes open, and the thoughts in his mind were heavy and lethargic, the most prominent of them being, <em> What an odd dream. </em></p><p>“Damnit! You’ve been asleep for too long. Hold on!” Ink grabbed hold of the destroyer. He carried the glitch downstairs, almost falling over in his haste, and kept asking him to stay awake.</p><p>Error was doing his best, but his consciousness kept trying to slip from his grasp like a fox’s tail from a hound dog. THe black skeleton saw no reason to be truly present while this hectic dream unfolded. Waiting for a more optimistic dream seemed like a better option.</p><p>Then he heard a voice — a booming, echoing voice that made his head ring — and it made him gasp for air.</p><p>
  <em> “You failed to meet the expectations placed upon you!” </em>
</p><p>If he was still asleep, then this was a nightmare. If he was awake, reality was horrifying.</p><p>“What’s going on?” Error was still very weak and confused. He recognized the room they entered as Ink’s basement and was struck with terror, thinking he’d end up chained up once again, but the artist carefully put him down next to some kind of a machine and started to do something inside it in haste.</p><p>“What you warned us about is what's going on,” the artist replied, and symbols for panic flickered inside his eyes only to be replaced with sad ones all of a sudden. “I’m so sorry, Error. If only I had a better understanding of the Multiverse instead of rushing blindly to fulfil its every desire, none of this would’ve happened.”</p><p>Before Error had the chance to wrap his head around what he’d heard and answer, the walls of the house started to crumble. Piece by piece, shingle by shingle, brick by brick, they were sucked into some sort of a hole in the distance.</p><p>“He’s already here!” Ink rushed to get things done. He turned on the machine, and it slowly started to open a portal to an unknown dark place. “Come on, can’t you work any faster?! A scientist Sans made this portal. You know, just in case. Who could’ve known that it would come in handy? Either way, right now this is the only way to survive.”</p><p>Error heard Ink speak, but he wasn’t looking at the artist. His eyes were glued to the hole that kept sucking in. It seemed to be getting closer… Then Error suddenly realized that it was a living creature that kept sucking everything — even emptiness — into its body. It left nothing behind. Nothing at all: no light, no darkness, no emptiness, no ceiling, no floor, no time… <em> Nothing! </em></p><p>The black skeleton took a good look at the approaching figure and froze in terror. He saw himself — or rather, he saw something akin to black silhouette bearing his shape.</p><p>“Don’t look at him!” Ink cried and pulled Error towards the portal. “He’s not what he seems.”</p><p>“Is that me?”</p><p>“No, he’s not! I see myself. Dream saw himself. Everyone sees themself in him. And he took everyone! And everything! He even took the void itself.”</p><p>Error blinked and seemed to come back to his senses. He once again looked at the creature he saw himself in and was stumped yet again: he saw Ink this time, and the figure even had a fluttering scarf.</p><p>The real Ink kept pushing Error into the portal — but the black skeleton stopped in his tracks all of a sudden.</p><p>“Where are your children and friends? Are you really only going to save the two of us?”</p><p>Ink smiled: “I’m going to see them soon. But not you. It wasn’t your fault that this had happened. It couldn’t have been your fault. I’m the only one to blame,” he said and pushed Error through the portal. Before it shut, Error heard the artist add: “Error, if you ever find yourself in a different Multiverse, and it needs help, help them. And I’m sorry…”</p><p>The portal vanished. And <em> darkness </em> came. Error found himself in a place devoid of any light. Not a glimmer of it, not a ray — nothing. The darkness was thick, viscous, and it moved like a living being. It wrapped around him like soft cotton and asked him to stay inside it forever, become one with it. It seemed to reach deep inside his bones, dragging him to follow it.</p><p>He struggled to pull away from the tight embrace, unwilling to become a part of such a dark place. What saved him was a speck of light in the distance.</p><p>Error got up. His unsteady legs could barely bear the weight of his body, shaking and threatening to give out, but Error forced himself to crawl, then to walk, then to run.</p><p>He ran like a madman — stumbled, fell down and got up again — but didn’t dare take his eyes off the light, fearful that it would vanish, leaving him alone with the darkness that was trying to devour him.</p><p>Finally, he got close enough to make out what it was. The light was coming from a lantern on top of a long pole, and holding the pole was…</p><p>“Dream!”</p><p>Error touched his streaks but found himself unable to summon his strings. He tried again, but the magic didn’t respond to his call. Terrified, he tried to summon his soul — what if something disastrous happened to it? — but it didn’t seem to want to leave his chest. Unwilling to waste time on figuring things out, he very nearly attacked the bearer of the familiar face with his bare hands, but stopped in his tracks when he was about three steps away.</p><p>“Dream?”</p><p>No, it wasn’t Dream before him — or rather, it wasn’t the Dream he knew. This one was dressed in medieval clothes and had a scary empty look in his eyes. He looked just like Ink when the artist spent a while off his paints. Staring into those empty eyes was unbearable, so Error looked up at the light source instead.</p><p>An apple. There was a small cage fixed on top of the pole, and inside it shone a golden apple. Dream’s soul.</p><p>Error felt everything inside him shudder. His eyes once again lowered to the soulless monster in front of him. His stare was drawn to the torn-up layers of cloth around the chest area, and through them he saw a ghastly hole in the other’s ribcage.</p><p>“Why did you do this to yourself?”</p><p>But the Dream didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at Error, just turned around and slowly headed off somewhere else, taking the light of hope with him.</p><p>Still shivering at the thought that something made the ever-positive skeleton rip his soul out and put it into a cage, Error trekked after him. He was too scared of getting lost inside the darkness again.</p><p>No matter how many questions the destroyer asked, his soulless guide remained silent.</p><p>And then Error saw some other soul’s light. It was glowing slightly to the right of them and kept getting brighter. Soon he was able to see who was holding that light.</p><p>If Error thought he was scared before, now he was terrified. He saw himself — or rather, he saw someone who looked extremely similar to him. That someone walked past him, as soulless and silent as the Dream he was following. The light of his lamp slowly vanished among the thick darkness.</p><p>Error could swear that somewhere in the darkness there was someone staring at him, whispering: <em> Come to us, be with us, it’s better to be together, not lonely. </em> Black tendrils of darkness slithered at the edge of his vision like beastly paws, but they didn’t dare come near the light of the pathlighter’s soul. Having noticed this, Error got closer to the Dream, almost touching him. At the moment touch terrified him way less than the surrounding unknown.</p><p>‘What the hell is this? Where am I? Who are you, Void dammit?!”</p><p>The Dream didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He didn’t even understand the words he heard. The only thing the pathlighter could do was scare away the darkness and lead survivors towards the islands of life.</p><p>And Error would’ve reached the light — and perhaps his story would’ve been different then — but he suddenly felt the familiar burst of fear. He squinted to the right and noticed the very creature that took his Multiverse. It still looked like Ink, and its scarf was flying in the non-existent wind.</p><p>“You?!”</p><p>Error had always been too impulsive and determined. He left the light of the lamp and rushed towards the creature through the darkness. The amalgamation howled victoriously, clinging to him, but Error didn’t seem to notice it or feel its grip as he pushed forward. He had a goal.</p><p>“You won’t get away!” He was already a mere step away from the creature. He touched it… and suddenly dropped into nowhere.</p><p>It felt as if his whole body was shoved through a keyhole and into a meat grinder, and then made into a patty. The hellish pain was followed by an impact as he hit the ground — and he found himself with no idea whether he was alive or about to die.</p><p>His body was stuck in a reboot and his mind was feverish. The “ERROR” lines that had always been following him were erased, lines of code were emptied. The usual glitches turned into wordless lines, as if the name of ‘Error” didn’t belong to him anymore.</p><p>He didn’t immediately realize he was still alive. He got up, grunting like an old man. The fact that he still could stand also proved that, at least, his bones weren’t broken. He regained his eyesight somehow only to see the familiar locations of DreamTale. The stump of the Tree was here, and so was its baffled owner.</p><p>Dream stood there, bug-eyed, and struggled to accept what he was seeing as reality. In front of his very eyes Error broke into a world that was supposed to be barred from entry. He didn’t just walk in either — no, he fell from the sky and created a crater of swollen wet ground with his landing.</p><p>“Perhaps all of this is just another freaking dream,” the destroyer muttered, hoping that was the case, He once again patted down his own body and rubbed his aching back. He turned to look at the resident of this universe once more: “Hey, Dream. Am I dreaming of you? Was that nonsense with a weirdo that devours worlds your doing? Things just haven’t been dramatic enough for you, huh?” he said as he approached the confused prince of positivity. The glitch touched his eyes and was surprised to see strings on his fingers: his magic was back.</p><p>Dream stood stiff as a rod for a couple more seconds, and those moments cost him dearly: before he could even summon his weapon, he already found himself hanging upside down inside a blue cocoon. And before him, arms crossed, stood a very pissed off destroyer of worlds.</p><p>Though upon further examination Dream noticed a few details that made him doubt the identity of the person before him.</p><p>“Error?” He sounded hesitant. “Is that you?”</p><p>“Who else can I be? Quit messing around!”</p><p>Dream shook his head and tried to wiggle out of the bindings. Questions poured out of him like a river:</p><p>“What are you even doing here, and how did you get here? And what happened to you? Your arm… Well… You look awful.”</p><p>“Thanks to you!” the black skeleton growled and took note of his own flickering glitches. The “ERROR” signs were gone.</p><p>“I… I haven’t done anything to you. It’s you who beat me up yesterday. Don’t you remember? Ink gave you quite a beating then as well.”</p><p>Error was completely baffled. He couldn’t believe this was real. His mind was a mush of thoughts, leaving no clear image of the present in his head. As far as he could tell, he recently got sentenced to oblivion, was put to sleep by Dream and slept for a while until he found himself in the dark and saw Dream there — and here he was now, and Dream was standing right in front of him yet again. There had been way too many guardians of dreams in his life, that’s for sure. Wait! What happened after the sleeping part but before the darkness?...</p><p>He removed the strings, which had the light prince falling to the ground with an indignant yelp. Dream’s behavior seemed a bit odd. Error had quite a few memories of the guardian of positivity — and none of them seemed to quite fit the skeleton before him.</p><p>“Okay, fine.” Error pressed his palms against his eye-sockets and tried to sort the mess inside his head into separate facts. “I think I’ll go.”</p><p>“Yeah, sure.” Dream was completely at a loss. Error came here, didn’t kill him and was now about to leave just like that. This didn’t seem like typical behavior of the world destroyer — especially considering how hard he always tried to break into DreamTale and pull it apart. And well, he was finally here, but he didn’t even seem to consider destroying it. Besides, there was the matter of his arm…</p><p>Error waved his hand and a portal opened up before him. It didn’t look stable though, and the curtain of glitches before him made it absolutely impossible to see where it was leading to.</p><p>“Error? Do you, perhaps, need any help?”</p><p>“You’ve done quite enough already, thanks,” the glitch snapped and tried to walk through the portal he’d made — only to fail. The portal looked two-dimensional and not at all real. “What the…?”</p><p>While Error kept trying to force his crazed magic to work, Dream shattered a vial of ink. The guardian of worlds instantly jumped out of the resulting puddle: “Dream, I’m a little bit bu…” and froze with his eyes wide open.</p><p>“Who’s that?” He asked his friend, pointing at the black skeleton, who was struggling with his third attempt at creating a working portal by now.</p><p>“Error.”</p><p>“That’s impossible. Dream, I’ve just finished fighting him. I came here straight from the battlefield. There can’t be two Errors, right? That’s impossible, <em> right</em>?!”</p><p>Error heard the shouting and turned around. <em> Now </em> he was inclined to believe that, perhaps, he really had gone insane. He was staring at the skeleton he was supposed to know — yet didn’t recognize him.</p><p>He couldn’t remember ever seeing Ink wear this odd outfit that looked like it came out of ChinaTale. And Ink had never been this emotional — not that he could remember, at least. And the shapes inside his eyes were usually different in meaning, while this Ink was clearly prone to abusing the red paint.</p><p>“Who are you?!” Ink fixed the guest with a threatening look, and summoned a black paintbrush to his hands. Wait, <em> black </em> paintbrush?!</p><p>“And who’re you?” Error was starting to realize that things were a little more complicated than he’d previously thought. What surrounded him was not a dreamscape but an off-the-rails reality.</p><p>“I’m Ink, the guardian of worlds!”</p><p>“Error, the destroyer of worlds,” the black skeleton introduced himself without much confidence to back it up. It felt odd to say that — as if he’d been erased from these monsters’ memories and was now trying to write himself back in. No. It was as if he’d never been a part of their memories to begin with and was now trying to replace someone who was.</p><p>That’s when he remembered Ink’s parting words: <em> Error, if you ever find yourself in a different Multiverse, and it needs help, help them. </em></p><p>“A different Multiverse?” he whispered, and fell into a lengthy reboot.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings for this chapter: mentions of mutilation.</p><p>Special thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn">Neutralcybertrn</a> for beta-reading this chapter!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He came back to his senses inside a very familiar basement.</p><p>“Are you kidding me?!” Error roared, struggling to break free from the chains he found himself in.</p><p>There were three people standing before him: Ink, Dream and Blue. Why was that kid here? Error knew the tiny Sans, remembered that he came from UnderSwap and even met him… four times or so. But no matter how many times he took UnderSwap apart into ones and zeros, it always came back from non-existence. At some point Error simply stopped bothering with that universe.</p><p>“Whoa, pal. Don’t thrash so hard. You’re gonna rip your arms off.” Blue was trying to calm him down.</p><p>“What do you care, kid?! Let me go!”</p><p>“Not so fast.” Ink looked tense. “First  we want to know who you are and why you look so much like Error. You even introduced yourself as him. That’s mighty suspicious, you know.”</p><p>“The only thing suspicious here is that you were made in China,” Error snorted and fixed Ink’s outfit with a look of disdain.</p><p>“Why China?” the guardian of AUs asked, confused by the verbal jab.</p><p>“Because they messed up the production: no soul and all,” the destroyer chuckled, then all of a sudden burst into hysterical laughter. He was talking to a messed up Ink, while his Multiverse was being digested inside that awful creature’s belly. Crying would’ve been more fitting, but for some reason he couldn’t help but laugh. After all, the only person who survived was the one who wanted to destroy everyone. Fate had a cruel sense of humor.</p><p>The wave of his emotions left Dream feeling sick: “He’s hysterical.”</p><p>“No shit, Sherlock. Can’t you tell us why?”</p><p>Blue stayed out of his friends’ conversation, watching the black skeleton thrash in a fit of laughter instead. The glitch was moving around so hard that he actually bashed his head against the wall. The youngest guardian couldn’t stay aside any longer. He ran up to the prisoner and embraced him just to keep him from hitting himself against the wall again.</p><p>“Don’t touch me!” the destroyer howled. A very familiar wave of glitches ran over his body.</p><p>“Enough!” Blue shouted — not at the prisoner but at his friends. “He’s gonna kill himself while you chat!”</p><p>That got their attention.</p><p>“Dream, maybe you should put him to sleep?” Ink suggested.</p><p>Error’s reaction was instant, and looked as if Ink had suggested a torturous death instead of simply sleeping.</p><p>“Nooo!!!” Error started to fight back, twisting and turning. He ended up breaking his left arm — but also ripped it free in the process. Everyone was instantly tightly bound with blue strings. The tables had turned somewhat. “You! Release me! Now!” he forced out, gasping for air after all the panicking he’d gone through. “Which of you has the key?”</p><p>“No one does. These shackles are made out of my magic.” Ink’s eyelights kept switching between shapes for fury and confusion.</p><p>“Then make them go away!” the destroyer demanded and moved the guardian closer to himself, freeing one of his arms. “Don’t try anything funny, or you’ll be down a friend.” His strings squeezed Dream tighter as proof, and the guardian of positivity let out a pained moan.</p><p>“Don’t get angry now, pal. We were just trying to play it safe here…”</p><p>“Shut your mouth and get this thing off me, you rainbow ink stain!”</p><p>Ink shuddered: he clearly found this nickname familiar. Though he didn’t hurry to free the strange aggressive skeleton, who looked so much like their ever-present problem.</p><p>“So you’re saying that you’re Error?”</p><p>“Get it off!” The destroyer was running out of patience.</p><p>“I just want to clarify this before I take the shackles off and you, quite possibly, kill us all: how can there be two Errors at once?”</p><p>The black skeleton felt choked up. He put out his eyelights as he fought back against the suffocating realization that his Multiverse was gone. He tried to deny it, but the reality kept biting into his soul like a flaming whip. Tears of anger and sadness welled up inside his eyes.</p><p>“My Multiverse… It’s gone… Everyone’s gone… I’m the only one left… That creature… It ate…”</p><p>Error glitched. Just the memory of the terrifying devourer of worlds was enough to freeze his whole system. In his mind’s eye he could still see his Multiverse die and his Ink ask for his forgiveness.</p><p>When he came back from a reboot, all of the guardians were already free from his strings and armed. They were waiting for his next move. Error felt completely drained though. He held his head in his hands as he slid down the wall. He just wanted to curl up into a ball and stop thinking. Stop believing. These were probably the most sincere tears he’d ever cried — only rivaled by the time he found himself feeling helpless inside the Save Screen.</p><p>Right now, he didn’t care if he was put to sleep again — or even killed. Anything was better than feeling, believing, remembering…</p><p> </p><p>He did fall asleep after all, but he woke up pretty soon, and not in shackles but in a bed. His hand had already been fixed: healing paints were something of a miracle.</p><p>His soul missed a beat when he recognized the room as the one he’d been collecting dust in for years before the <em> end</em>. Ink’s guest room. It was different though: different pictures on the walls, different colours, and even the furniture was a little different from what he remembered.</p><p>He got up from the bed and slowly walked up to the door, mindful of the sounds behind it. He opened the door a crack and heard the guardian trio discuss him.</p><p>“...something like this a little hard to believe,” Ink said. “An Error from a different Multiverse. It sounds crazy!”</p><p>“Not as crazy as <em> seeing </em> an Error from a different Multiverse?” Dream pointed out. “He made quite an entrance. Not a sight for the faint of heart. There was a hole in the sky, and there was <em> so much </em> terror coming from it that I can still feel it.” He shuddered. “And he fell from that hole, dropped a good thousand feet and smashed into the ground. I thought I’d be collecting his dust — but he got up like nothing happened.”</p><p>“Sounds like a fever dream,” Blue noted. “But forget about him coming from a different Multiverse. I’m more worried about his Multiverse being gone. I think he said that someone <em> ate it</em>?”</p><p>“Can we really trust anything he says?” Ink was skeptical. “What if <em> he </em> was the one who destroyed his Multiverse, and now he’s shifting blame on some other being. He didn’t even say what its name was…”</p><p>“That’s because that thing wasn’t much of a talker.” Error leaned on the banister, looking down at the guardians from the vantage point of the second floor.</p><p>“Maybe you could at least describe who it was? Another Error, perhaps?” Ink chuckled nervously.</p><p>A shiver rolled over Error’s bones. His knees buckled, and he sat down on the floor, pushing his legs through the lattice of the banister to hang freely in the air. He stayed silent for a long while. A veil of glitches covered his eyes, preventing him from seeing anything but the scraps of terrifying memories.</p><p>“How do I describe the indescribable?” he asked himself. “Let me give it go.” He gave it some more consideration before saying: “It’s like he’s every one of us but isn’t anyone at the same time. When he gets close, everything you’ve ever lived for ceases to matter. You can feel your end coming — it feels more real than ever — and it’s no one’s fault but your own. But the creepiest thing about him is his voice. It’s like it guts you, pulling all of your sensations out of you and leaving an empty husk behind. I heard him say — and it sounded as if it was coming from inside my own head: ‘You failed to meet the expectations placed upon you.’ Failed. To meet. Expectations. Failed to meet them. As if he’d reached a verdict and the verdict was that we didn’t deserve to live.”</p><p>For a couple of minutes the room was soaked in deathly silence, but while Blue and Dream were too shaken by the terror of the story to speak, Ink struggled to choose an emotion to go with. The soulless monster picked an odd option in the end.</p><p>“So that creature acted like you,” he said. “It came to your Multiverse like you come to universes, and it took the lives of its residents.”</p><p>Error flinched. He hadn’t considered it from that angle. This line of thinking sent him into yet another reboot.</p><p>Outraged, Dream and Blue instantly went off on their friend:</p><p>“Ink! How could you?! He lost <em> everything</em>!”</p><p>“So what?” the guardian of worlds asked, confused. “I only voiced the conclusions I’ve made. Don’t look at me like that. I lack empathy. Besides, I think he got what he deserved.”</p><p>“You’re nuts.” Blue actually stepped away from him. “Even if Error needed something to keep him in line — this isn’t the right way! Everyone he knew died, and his home was turned to dust!”</p><p>“That’s what I said: The thing he’s been doing to others happened to him.”</p><p>Dream frowned but didn’t argue anymore. He agreed with his friend somewhat, even though his kind heart refused to wish such a tragedy on anyone. He looked up at the glitched-out skeleton, who was still struggling with reining in his emotions, and asked his friends:</p><p>“What are we going to do with him?”</p><p>Blue and Ink instantly dropped their argument to share a thoughtful look. What <em> were </em> they going to do?</p><p>“Two destroyers is two too many.” Ink propped his jaw with his fist.</p><p>“Let’s assume he comes from China,” Dream said, bringing up Error’s joke. “He can’t even open a portal. I think we can just get him settled somewhere and forget all about him.”</p><p>“Only until he re-learns everything — and then he’d be back at it again.”</p><p>“Well, we could block his magic,” Dream suggested. “Without his magic he’d be about as dangerous as a lazy skeleton.”</p><p>“A <em> crazy </em> lazy skeleton.” Ink snorted. “Remember Horror? He gives us a run for our money even though he has no magic. Who’s to say this Error wouldn’t slaughter everyone around him, just like Dust?”</p><p>“Okay.” Dream rubbed his forehead. “I get where you’re going with this. You’re suggesting we not only strip him of magic but also leave him in an empty world, where he’ll be left to die from loneliness.”</p><p>“He has voices inside his head to talk to,” Ink parried.</p><p>“We don’t know if this madman has the voices or not.”</p><p>Blue stood up abruptly, slamming his fist on the table.</p><p>“You two are disgusting!” he stated. “We have a guest who really needs our help and support, and instead of thinking of ways to help him, you’re discussing how to punish him! Are you out of your minds?! Besides, he can hear you! Has either of you considered what he’s feeling?! He lost his entire Multiverse! What if his friends or loved ones were there?! Have you even considered how painful that must be?!”</p><p>“Error… having loved ones…?” Ink tried to point out how ridiculous the notion was, but a glare of his friend’s blue eyes stopped him mid-word.</p><p>“Yes, Ink. Loved ones, whom he likely lost.”</p><p>Done talking, Blue hurried to step away from his friends and walk up the stairs to get to Error. He ignored the glitch’s complaints as he dragged him into the guest room. There he sat the destroyer on the bed and wrapped him in a blanket.</p><p>“Sorry about that,” he said. “Their responsibilities force them to consider the happiness of the majority first. But I don’t agree with this — and I’m a guardian too. So rest assured: I won’t let them hurt you.”</p><p>“Big words for a little brat,” the black skeleton wheezed around the lump in his throat.</p><p>“I may be a little brat, but I’m a strong little brat. Those two accepted me into their team for a reason. The local version of you had quite a bit to do with that too, by the way.” Blue winked. “Oh! I wonder: if the local you saw you, would he even survive or would he keep glitching till the end of his days?” The youngest guardian giggled.</p><p>Error imagined meeting himself and chuckled as well. Under different circumstances he might’ve even laughed — but not right now, when his soul was barely beating, smothered under the heavy thoughts plaguing him.</p><p>“And what if Ink is right, and I will end up destroying worlds, just like I did back in my own Multiverse?”</p><p>“And do you want that?”</p><p>Error considered it and was startled by how alarmed he felt. He didn’t just want to destroy worlds — he felt like he <em> needed </em> to do it. Right now. Immediately!</p><p>“Perhaps I do,” he hummed. His soul shrunk. “I don’t know why, but I feel like it needs to be done. But I don’t understand why. It just has to be done — as if there’s a lot that depends on it,” was his disjointed explanation.</p><p>Blue’s smile was awkward. He was hoping for a different answer.</p><p>“Just don’t say this to Ink. I don’t know how different he is from the one you knew, but ours is quick to exact his judgement. I doubt he would kill you, but…”</p><p>That “but” sounded ominous.</p><p>“I heard his ideas. Drastic, but fair. Probably.”</p><p>“I guess that’s because you’re you.” Blue scratched the bridge of his nose. “He’s pretty lenient when it comes to the Error of our Multiverse. Sure, he beats him up, breaks a few bones sometimes — but that’s about it. He always lets him leave no matter what our Error does. Though ever since the incident,” Blue averted his eyes, “our Error can’t do much anyway.”</p><p>If Error had any hair, it would’ve been standing on end. He found himself wondering whether this poor guy was put to sleep as well.</p><p>“What did you do to him?”</p><p>“In one of their fights, Ink cut his right arm off.” Blue gripped his own shoulder, as if it had just cramped up with pain. “And he didn’t heal him. Error can barely fight back the nightmares now, and he rarely manages to destroy even a single world.”</p><p>This felt a lot like another encounter with that Multiverse-eating creature, because Error found himself about the same level of terrified.</p><p>Yes, back in his home Multiverse there had been times when he and Ink injured each other, and sometimes they found themselves missing a limb or two — but these encounters never had endings this bad. Ink always healed his enemy, drawing back whatever he’d lost.</p><p>Error remembered a time when he was badly injured by Nightmare. He didn’t just lose his arm back then: both of his legs were also torn off at the knees. Back then, Ink healed him, nursed him back to health and let him go afterwards, even though he knew that the destroyer would forever remain a destroyer, and no matter how much kindness he was shown, that wouldn’t change his core values. And yet Ink still remained patient about his stunts for an incredibly long time.</p><p>Error had to wonder, what had triggered his Ink to resort to drastic measures to rein in his old enemy, and agree to put him to sleep. Error suspected that the incident involving one of the artist’s kids had something to do with it: The black skeleton had no way of knowing that Ink’s child was residing in the world he’d come to destroy. Though didn’t Error stop once he realized whose soul he was holding before him? It’s not like he did something irreparable to that kid. Either way, those arguments fell on deaf ears, and that’s when Ink and Error had their first truly deadly fight. Then another one followed… Everything started to change…</p><p>Upon emerging from the depths of his memories, Error suddenly realized he couldn’t see any signs of children ever visiting this house.</p><p>“Where are his kids?”</p><p>“Whose kids?” Blue asked, confused.</p><p>“Ink’s.”</p><p>The youngest guardian looked so shocked, as if the world had just turned upside down and he was told that <em> he </em> had just become a parent.</p><p>“Ink? As a parent? Wowie. I think this is the part where I’m supposed to cry in shock, clutch my head and jump out the window. What was the Ink of your Multiverse thinking, making kids? Did they even survive? Our Ink never would have bothered dealing with them. He would’ve just kicked them out into the Omega Timeline and forgot all about them.”</p><p>“The Creators gave him a whole bunch of kids.” The destroyer chuckled, remembering how Ink panicked and tried to hand out the Creators’ gifts to any people who’d take them, like kittens. He even approached Error at some point, offering him a black kiddo, who looked pretty similar to the destroyer.</p><p>The Creators had always had an odd sense of humor.</p><p>In spite of his soullessness, Ink raised his kids to be good people. He protected them like a loving parent would. But now Error knew there was an Ink who wouldn’t have bothered taking care of his children and instead would’ve dumped them in the Omega Timeline — and this knowledge had his soul squeeze at the realization that any of the good things he’d had in the past were going to remain in the past.</p><p>Seeing the destroyer frown, Blue concluded:</p><p>“I guess, things were different back in your Multiverse.”</p><p>“I guess so. I feel like an Original stuck in a Fell AU. No offense. But the Ink of my Multiverse wasn’t this harsh of a person.”</p><p>Blue sighed in relief: their conversation helped calm down the guest, and the glitch wasn’t shaking quite as much now. However, there was still an issue that remained unresolved, and Error wanted to know what the solution would be:</p><p>“”So what are you going to do with me?”</p><p>Blue hesitated. He may have been a kindhearted person, but he still hadn’t come up with anything better than Ink’s suggestions. He did try to offer a solution though:</p><p>“Perhaps, you could live in the Omega Timeline?”</p><p>“No!” Ink was standing in the doorway with Dream hovering behind him. “He can’t go there — and even he can tell why that is.”</p><p>Error really could. He cringed as if he’d just taken a bite out of a lemon: “They won’t accept me there. Since I look quite similar to your Error, the residents of the Omega Timeline would do their best to put me six feet under — just to be safe.”</p><p>“But locking him up and stripping him of magic isn’t the right way either!” the youngest guardian insisted. He stood between the guardian of worlds and the black skeleton as he reasoned: “We need to be kind, Ink. We can’t just do the same thing to him that you did to our Error. We can’t just up and leave him defenseless!”</p><p>“Blue is right,” Dream sided with the youngest guardian. “This Error hasn’t done anything wrong yet. We shouldn’t judge before we know him.”</p><p>Ink fixed his friends with a dubious look — first Blue, then Dream — and turned to stare at Error. His eyelights were red, which spoke of less than positive thoughts going through his mind.</p><p>“He hasn’t done anything wrong <em> yet</em>,” he said. “But he might. And I don’t want to take that risk. But you’re right,” Ink hurried to say before his friends could start screaming, “we can’t just assume that our guest is going to be a troublemaker. So I’ll get him settled in an empty world <em> temporarily</em>. Just to make sure. And later we’ll make sure to find him a proper home. There should be some AUs around that would be able to take in a former destroyer of worlds.”</p><p>Error was itching to say: <em> Why do you assume that I’m a </em> former <em> destroyer? </em> He held his tongue though, not wanting to dig himself deeper into the hole.</p><p>“Do whatever you want,” Error said and sank deeper under the blanket’s cover. All the things he’d been through left him feeling numb and empty-headed. He just wanted to sleep. <em> Damn, as if I hadn’t slept enough already, </em> was the last thing he thought before falling asleep.</p><p>He didn’t care about the possibility of never waking up anymore. If anything, he would’ve found it a perfect solution. Then he could keep dreaming. Then he’d be able to pretend that everything that had happened was just a dream as well — that he was still in Ink’s guest bedroom and all the vibrant worlds were still there, beyond the limits of the Void. He’d be able to pretend that no one had devoured anything and everything was okay.</p><p>But Error’s dream changed then: memories of the terrifying recent events and Ink’s parting words had followed him into the dreamscape.</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Special thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn">Neutralcybertrn</a> for beta-reading this chapter!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Blue was outraged: “Ink, that’s cruel!”</p><p>But the guardian of worlds stood his ground: “Even if it is, my job is to maintain peace and order inside the AUs and inspire Creators to create new worlds. My job description doesn’t include letting the people who ruin all of that, live.”</p><p>“But he’s our guest—”</p><p>“An unwelcome one. So he should be grateful that we didn’t kick him out.”</p><p>“I bet you would’ve kicked him out by now if you know how.” Blue crossed his arms, fixing his friend with a reproachful look. “He needs help.”</p><p>“And we <em> are </em> helping him.”</p><p>“By leaving him inside an empty universe? One without even the most basic of comforts?”</p><p>“We’ve provided him with a house! And there’s food in there!” Ink was starting to get angry. “I’m not cruel: I’m not going to let him starve.”</p><p>Dream stayed out of his friends’ argument. He didn’t know which side to take, so he let Blue and Ink settle this on their own.</p><p>“But he’d still be all alone! Why do you want this Error to suffer just like ours does?”</p><p>“Our Error isn’t suffering! He’s just being difficult because he can’t destroy AUs anymore!” Ink snapped. “He has lots of free time now, and it’s not my fault if he doesn’t want to use it to create a normal life for himself!”</p><p>“A normal life?” Blue actually hissed. “And how would he go about creating this normal life you speak of, huh, Ink?! Everyone knows him — and they all despise him! The moment he shows his face anywhere, everyone around him tries to kill him — and with his arm missing, he can’t even properly protect himself!”</p><p>“So why won’t he come to us for help?!”</p><p>Blue buried his face in his palms, mentally begging for stars to give him patience: “Would you have come for help to the people who mutilated you and promised to tear your legs off to boot? Would you, Ink?”</p><p>The guardian only shrugged in response. He didn’t see anything particularly awful about what had happened. Error had been a lot less troublesome this past decade. Sure, he didn’t look too good, but the Multiverse could finally live in peace. And in the meantime so many new worlds had appeared, that it would’ve taken more than a year to visit them all — and they kept coming.</p><p>Blue sat down on the couch next to dream, still hiding his face in his hands. This conversation had been extremely draining. He considered keeping quiet about a little fact he’d learned from their guest, but he’d grown so tired of running into the solid wall of soullessness that he actually shared it:</p><p>“Our guest said that the Ink of his Multiverse had kids.”</p><p>It was barely noticeable, but Ink shivered. Confusion tinged with panic found their way onto his face. However, he was quick to pull himself together and say:</p><p>“That’s nonsense. I wouldn’t have chosen to have kids: I have too many responsibilities to deal with already.”</p><p>“He didn’t choose to have kids either: the Creators gave them to him.”</p><p>This only served to bewilder Ink further.</p><p>“Why would the Creators give me kids, when They already have me swamped with work?”</p><p>“I guess it was done so that you’d take a break from work more often,” Dream chimed in.</p><p>“And die just like that Ink did?” The guardian of worlds brushed them off and, having decided he didn’t like where this conversation was going, hurried to leave on patrol.</p><p>Blue and Dream shared a look.</p><p>“Okay. At least he didn’t bring up drastic measures,” the prince of dreams said as a way to reassure the stressed out youngest guardian.</p><p>“And what if he did?” Blue asked glumly.</p><p>“We would’ve stopped him.” Dream promised.</p><p>“And what if he does bring them up yet?”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“What if this Error turns to destruction as well and starts to cause chaos? Then what?”</p><p>Dream considered it and voiced the sad conclusion he’d come to: “Error get special treatment from Ink. But Ink wouldn’t extend this to a person he has no shared history with. So I think our guest had better keep his head down.”</p><p>Blue thought back to what their guest said to him: <em> I don’t know why, but I feel like it needs to be done. But I don’t understand why. It just has to be done — as if there’s a lot that depends on it. </em> He tried to tell himself that the new Error wasn’t stupid and would lay low, but deep inside his soul he knew that the black skeleton would eventually come to destroy AUs — just like their Error refused to stop. Whether mutilated, stripped of magic or forced to crawl — he’d still make his move.</p><p>“And if you’d have to choose?” Blue asked.</p><p>“I’m going to support Ink, of course. He’s doing the right thing, and bringing death and destruction isn’t right, right?”</p><p>“Yeah.” The youngest guardian’s frown deepened. He chose a side as well, and he intended to stick to it.</p><p> </p><p>Meanwhile, inside the Anti-Void a black skeleton was staring into the code of AUs. He’d noticed something strange: a code that looked extremely similar to his own. He wanted to see who it was. What if the new destroyer was this Multiverse’s chance of salvation?</p><p>He couldn’t go and meet them though: the person in question was hidden in a heavily locked up universe, and each of the locks was going to take hours — maybe even days — to unlock.</p><p>“Welp, it’s not like I have anything better to do,” he said and reflexively gripped his empty right shoulder.</p><p> </p><p>Error awoke with a soft yelp only to discover that he wasn’t in Ink’s house anymore. He found himself inside some sort of a cabin, and a look through the window revealed a snowy forest. He must’ve been taken to the empty world they’d been talking about.</p><p>The chill nipped at his bones.</p><p>“Couldn’t they have sent me to a tropical island or something?” the black skeleton complained as he attempted to light the fire inside an old-fashioned stove. Soon he succeeded, and the air inside the cabin grew warmer.</p><p>He felt hungry. The sensation was faint, but still…</p><p>A little searching revealed a stash of grains and other groceries.</p><p>“Not chocolate,” Error concluded as he chewed the slightly burned porridge he’d cooked.</p><p>He spent a while staring out the window as the wind blew the snowflakes every which way. The glitch kept thinking that he didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong in this world, and he wasn’t doing the things he was supposed to be doing.</p><p>He tried to shout for the Voices, but They didn’t seem to hear him, as if there were no Creators left who could talk to him. For once, his head was filled with the blessed silence he was so desperate for back in his own Multiverse yet hated now.</p><p>“I could use some advice.” Error still kept saying things out loud out of habit, but the lack of any response filled him with the bitterness of loneliness.</p><p>He tried to open a portal to just about anywhere, but this only resulted in a flat <em> something </em> that was easier to use as a wall than to force it to work as intended. He tried to relax and treat this imprisonment like a vacation, but the feeling of alarm inside him kept him tense at all times.</p><p>He tried to keep himself distracted: read books, cleaned the cabin, cooked and even went riding down the hills on the sled he’d found — but the feeling of impending doom only grew stronger with each passing day.</p><p>“Even if something happens, it’s not like I can do anything about it. I’m just a guest here, and my magic doesn’t work the way it should. And these bastards might very well lock me up here till the end of times. Or until the food runs out. They might just forget that I exist, and I’ll starve to death here, and then, when they remember about me, they’ll only find dust.” He was thinking out loud as he poured almost half a jar of jam into the bland porridge.</p><p>“Actually, we agreed on restocking your pantry once a week,” said Ink as he walked out of a portal with a sack in his arms. He inspected his surroundings with the look of a person who expected to find ruins in place of a cabin. “How are you doing?”</p><p>Error fixed the guardian with a tired glare and kept on eating in silence. Resentment for this Ink roiled inside him: the artist felt like a thief who’d stolen another’s identity.</p><p>“Listen, I’m sorry if I wasn’t considerate enough, but you gave us a scare, and you have to admit, you weren’t really acting normal either.”</p><p>Error kept pretending that the porridge was a lot more interesting than the guardian.</p><p>“Anyway, I brought you more food.” In an attempt to mend the ruined relationship, Ink pulled a chocolate bar out of the sack. Error’s favorite. He twisted it this way and that, showing it off, then put it on the table like a tribute for a stern god.</p><p>Error actually choked on the porridge. He forced himself to swallow, pushed the dish out of the way and gobbled down the chocolate bar — wrapper and all. Judging by how Ink recoiled in shock, the Error of his Multiverse had never done that in front of him. When the chewy ball that used to be wrapper, was spat out into a waste bin, the artist actually gulped.</p><p>“Did you like it?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Error nodded and ignored the guardian until he left. Only then did the black skeleton dump the contents of the sack out and wolfed down all the chocolate he found.</p><p>It brought him no satisfaction — nor did it make him happy. Quite on the contrary: the familiar taste provoked a feeling of loss to arise inside him.</p><p>“Why did everything have to turn out this way?”</p><p>He spent a while longer thinking about his home Multiverse and all the people he’d never get to see again — or rather, he <em> would </em> get to see them, but they wouldn’t be the people he knew.</p><p>He would’ve spent even more time agonizing over his memories, but all of a sudden a portal opened up in front of him, and he saw himself come out of it — or rather, he saw someone who looked a lot like him, but who’d been through <em> a lot</em>. This black skeleton was missing his right arm and was dressed in ragged clothes. He wore a look of bewilderment on his face.</p><p>Meeting himself turned out to be an incredibly frightening experience.</p><p>The two black skeletons stared at each other for a little longer, then the one who was missing an arm grabbed the other one with his strings and dragged him into the Anti-Void.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings for this chapter: mentions of mutilation.</p><p>Special thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn">Neutralcybertrn</a> for beta-reading this chapter!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The battle promised to be extremely odd. Talk about fighting a shadow… Though one of said shadows turned out to be defective.</p><p>Error knew himself and his own attacks, so he expected to face an onslaught of attacks in a bloodshed of a battle, but instead he got only half of what he expected. Missing an arm greatly affected the other skeleton’s fighting ability. He couldn’t do much in a fight against a healthy monster. Sure, his strings were still deadly, but there were only half as many of them as usual, and his control over them clearly wasn’t up to snuff.</p><p>The fight ended with the guest stringing the host up among the other’s puppets. However, instead of expected outrage he heard screams of joy:</p><p>“So you’re not a hallucination? You really are an Error, just like me? You’re me?”</p><p>Error’s fighting spirit was gone in a flash, replaced by confusion:</p><p>“And what of it?”</p><p>“Did the Creators make you to replace me?” the one-armed skeleton asked, sounding hopeful.</p><p>“Nope. I ended up here after my Multiverse perished.” Error tried to make it sound as if he didn’t care in the slightest.</p><p>He looked around, unable to tell whether he was home or not. Everything seemed to be the same — the same puppets, a hammock here, a beanbag chair there — but everything was slightly different — enough to remind him that, no, he wasn’t, in fact, home. The stitching on the puppets was all wrong, the hammock was hanging at a different angle, and the beanbag was the wrong colour.</p><p>He didn’t notice the look of terror the other skeleton was giving him, but he did recognize the compassion in the other’s voice:</p><p>“How did it happen?”</p><p>Error found the tone of his voice unnerving. He wasn’t used to being met with compassion. It drove him to vent, even though he kept the story as brief as possible.</p><p> </p><p>“... and he devoured everything.”</p><p>The one-armed skeleton remained silent for a long while, choosing his words, but he couldn’t think of anything capable of relaying the sadness he found himself drowned in. He also couldn’t help but think that the same fate — the death of his Multiverse — awaited him.</p><p>“Help me,” he pleaded.</p><p>“I didn’t sign up to save my copies…”</p><p>But the Error of this Multiverse ignored his words in favor of begging:</p><p>“Please, destroy in my stead!”</p><p>“You can destroy things yourself, you idiot!”</p><p>“But Ink instantly knows whenever I destroy anything. Your code is different from mine, so he won’t detect you at once! Please! Otherwise… otherwise something awful would happen. I can feel it, it’s already in motion, but I’m not strong enough to convince Ink that I’m right! The end is coming!” He seemed to be on the verge of tears.</p><p>“You're disgusting and pathetic.”</p><p>“And so are you. Your Ink put you to sleep, because he didn’t believe you either,” the one-armed skeleton retorted. “But you’re strong — not just in body, but in spirit as well. You’re full of determination — while mine’s gone. I don’t want to live, and it’s unbearable to see everything slowly come to an end. It feels like climbing up a gallows, one step a year.”</p><p>“Wait a sec.” The guest of the Multiverse covered his eyes with a hand and tried to wrap his head around what his copy was telling him. “What are you talking about? What end? What gallows?”</p><p>“Don’t you feel it?” the copy asked, surprised. “I don’t know what the hell devoured your Multiverse, but ours isn’t faring any better. Listen to the Multiverse, you idiot!”</p><p>And Error did listen. He once again was hit with the alarming feeling of impending doom. The sensation was even stronger now than in the previous few days he’d spent in this Multiverse, and now he understood it better, found himself able to check the code and <em> see </em> the horrifying image of what was going on.</p><p>“You see it, don’t you?”</p><p>He saw the abundance of AUs that practically stood on top of each other. Finished, barely-started, long-abandoned, half-destroyed — all of them were there, mixed up and out of order. The worst part? There were “rotting” worlds among them as well, infecting their neighbours with their “miasmas”. The surviving universes were pretty much piled up on top of AU corpses.</p><p>Error paled. His thoughts came to a grinding halt, and the shock was so great he couldn’t even enter a reboot. The destroyer had never believed in his goal as much, as he did now.</p><p>“How did you let this happen?”</p><p>He swore that it felt like a single new universe would be enough to make the whole thing collapse.</p><p>The one-armed Error looked away. He didn’t try to defend himself though:</p><p>“I wasn’t strong and persuasive enough, and Ink was too cruel and determined. I kept trying to clean up this mess, but… you see how it went. Ink refuses to listen to me, considers me crazy and keeps trying to convince me I’m the messed-up one. He actually told me: ‘You won’t be able to defeat me and destroy worlds anymore, so leave it all behind, Error and live.’ He doesn’t see what we see.”</p><p>“And you want me to fix all of your shit? <em> All of this? </em> Even if I was to start today, it would still take me at least a century to fix this crap — and that’s only if the guardians would kindly stay out of my way.”</p><p>“Just give it a try.” The one-armed Error shrunk. “Otherwise you’ll get to witness the death of <em> this </em> Multiverse as well. You’re strong…”</p><p>Error clenched his teeth: “No, I’m not. If I was strong, my Multiverse wouldn’t have been destroyed.”</p><p>“I’m sorry about your Home, but you can still save this one. And you can keep living here if you want. I won’t mind having a colleague. And if I seem annoying, I can even leave and stay out of your sight.”</p><p>“Such a sacrifice — and for what?”</p><p>“I just want everything to be like before.”</p><p>“You can’t bring back the past, idiot! Nothing will ever be like before!!!” Error had no idea whether he was talking to his copy or to himself then, but it sounded like a final concession.</p><p>“Then perhaps, everything can still become better than before?”</p><p>Error tsked angrily. No, it couldn’t. Nothing would ever be better than before. His Multiverse was gone for good, and his one-armed copy was just feverishly obsessed with a pipe dream. Error used to be the same way, back when he was a prisoner of the Save Screen — back when it felt as if as long as he managed to get out, everything would be better than before, everything would change. Everything <em> did </em> change — but not for the better.</p><p>Error was about to brush his desperate alternate aside — this wasn’t <em> his </em> problem after all — but then he remembered his Ink’s parting words. <em> Help them! Help them! Help them! </em> pulsed loudly inside his head. Ink’s final words, torn out of their context and running in a loop.</p><p><em> Shut up, you bastard! You’re dead and don’t get a say in this anymore. And it’s your fault that I’ve spent stars-know-how-many years asleep. So why should I remember and respect your last request? </em> he thought.Then he remembered how sad his Ink looked, and how he talked about joining his friends and children soon. <em> And yet you still saved me, you prick. I guess I should pay you back for it, huh? </em></p><p>“What’s the plan?”</p><p> </p><p>The one-armed skeleton’s plan was pretty stupid. But Error had to admit, it wasn’t the worst one possible. Since Error was capable of destroying worlds but not of travelling about, the one-armed skeleton was going to work as his guide and take him from one world to another.</p><p>Naturally, there was a risk of the guardians’ interference. The local Ink wasn’t going to be forgiving — not where Error was involved, at least. Best case scenario: He would rip his head off and tell his friends it was an accident. He might even pretend to be upset about it: he had the colours for that. And Error’s poor copy would end up beaten-up and sent back to his home Anti-Void to heal.</p><p>With that in mind, the duo chose the most inconsequential of worlds to start the cleanup with. Those were the worlds, whose disappearance Ink wasn’t likely to sense.</p><p>In spite of all the risks, Error decided to help. He had no idea what was the final push he needed to come to this decision: the voice of the deceased Ink, the pleas of his mutilated copy or his own aversion to living as the only survivor.</p><p>Either way, soon everything was ready to put the first part of their plan in motion. The one-armed Error opened a portal to a long-abandoned world. The guest stepped inside, fully aware that the path he’d chosen might just end up being his last.</p><p>The world was dead and empty. Like a beached whale, it was rotting away among similar corpses. Destroying it was as easy as breaking a china cup against a stone floor. Mere seconds later the destroyers were already on their way to another world.</p><p>The one-armed skeleton was tense, constantly looking over his shoulder. He remained on high alert, expecting for Ink to appear from any wrinkle in reality. Meanwhile, the guest did quick work of the worlds, leaving no traces behind,  just like an experienced murderer. He knew that soon enough the guardians would realize who to blame for the chaos. They would check if their guest from another Multiverse was still in his personal prison — he wasn’t — and then they would put two and two together and hunt him down. Their only hope was to destroy as many worlds as possible before the inevitable confrontation.</p><p>“I wish we could get into the Doodle Sphere,” Error sighed. He was exhausted, and they’d only gotten rid of fifteen small AUs so far — dead ones to boot.</p><p>“I tried.” The one-armed skeleton confessed. “That psycho nearly added one-leggedness to my one-armedness — and that’s just for <em> trying </em> to break in there.”</p><p>Error felt disgusted by his mutilated copy. Then again, if his own Ink had been just as cruel — who knew? — he might’ve ended up as a neurotic, helpless idiot as well.</p><p>One by one, the worlds kept turning to dust, but this barely made a dent in the burden that weighed down the Multiverse. A day of nonstop destruction did little to better the state of the Multiverse — and the black skeletons were already exhausted. They didn’t plan on quitting now. Besides, they must’ve attracted the guardians’ attention by now. They could practically feel them breathing down their necks.</p><p>The confrontation happened about three days later. By then they’d managed to erase a lot of dead worlds and a couple of dying ones. It’s one of the dying ones that the destroyers got caught in.</p><p>A golden arrow struck the ground at their feet. They both turned around to face the archer with doomed expressions on their faces, secretly hoping that Dream would be the only person they’d see. No such luck. Blue and that damned Ink were also there.</p><p>“We’re dead,” the one-armed Error concluded.</p><p>“Yep, you definitely are,” Ink said, crossing his arms. Red fury swirled inside his eyes.</p><p>The one-armed skeleton didn’t expect any negotiations to happen — he knew his Ink too well — so he went straight to attacking. A glitchy blaster sent off a shot, while strings created a feeble barrier.</p><p>Error didn’t join him. Instead, he stepped under the protection of the improvised shield and took a moment to study his enemies’ abilities. Blue and Dream had the exact same attacks their alternates from his own Multiverse did, but Ink was extremely brutal. He was quick to break both the shield and the blaster, then trapped his destroyer in inks and turned his attention to the guest.</p><p>“I knew you couldn’t be trusted!” he roared. “All you do is cause problems — and you even pulled a resident of our Multiverse into your schemes. You bastard! How many worlds have you erased so far?!”</p><p>Error didn’t even consider fleeing: Even if he did escape, what was the point? They’d find him eventually, and then they’d either kill him or lock him up again, leaving him to spend the last of his days alone. So why not settle this here and now?</p><p>“I wasn’t asking for your trust,” Error said. He grinned like a madman and fought like one too. This was his final battle after all, so nothing was off the table anymore.</p><p>Dream kept trying to hit him with his arrows, Blue was throwing bones at him, and Ink went for close combat. The artist was strong — a lot stronger than the deceased Ink — but he hadn’t faced a worthy opponent in a while, so now he ended up rewarded with a few bleeding decorations: a blast to the back and a bone to the leg.</p><p>And no matter how strong this Ink was, the other one used to be strong too, when under red paint, so at first Error could fight confidently enough to successfully  keep his enemy at bay and even counterattack.</p><p>However, it changed nothing. Error soon found himself badly injured: an arrow was sticking out of his back, his left arm had been pierced by a bone, and a crack marred his skull. One of Ink’s attacks threw him a few hundred feet away, dragging him through the ground upon landing.</p><p>“Wait! Listen to me!” the destroyer cried, trying to reason with the guardian, but Ink refused to talk to him. He didn’t want to hear any excuses. He only wanted to get rid of the threat to the Multiverse. He even tossed away his friends, when they tried to talk some sense into him.</p><p>Error barely managed to pull himself to his feet. He saw Ink coming closer and sensed his bloodlust. His soul stuttered: he was about to die.</p><p>Something horrible happened then. All of a sudden nothing seemed to matter anymore. Destruction, creation, protecting friends, dreams — everything they’d been living for turned unimportant, and an eerie voice echoed inside their heads:</p><p>“<em>You failed to meet the expectations placed upon you!</em>”</p><p>This was the very same voice Error heard before he saw <em> that insatiable creature</em>. Fighting against the overwhelming apathy, he looked at Ink and said:</p><p>“That’s the creature that devoured my Multiverse.”</p><p>“That means you lead it straight to us,” Ink concluded and tried to call up his rage, but his eyelights remained white. It felt like the end of all things was nearing, and it stripped him of faith and will. “You’ve doomed us all!”</p><p>“No, Ink. <em> I </em> didn’t.” Error saw his copy curl up into a ball, gripping his head. Blue fell to his knees, crying. Dream soundlessly moved his jaw, mouthing, <em> It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true. </em></p><p>Error had zero desire to become such a spineless creature, helpless before someone else’s will. He stood up and shouted:</p><p>“We need to find and stop him! Otherwise the same thing that happened to my home will happen to yours!”</p><p>But they didn’t seem to hear him. Ink was the only one who managed to pull himself together — but only to attack Error with a new portion of accusations:</p><p>“I think I know what’s going on. You lead him straight to us. He followed your trail, glitch.”</p><p>“What the hell are you talking about, ink stain?! Are you out of your mind?!” Ink hissed through his teeth. Yet he still shook at the very thought. What if it was true? What if he was the one who brought this disaster upon them? What if it was his fault that this creature would now devour them all?</p><p>“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.” Ink swung his paintbrush, but Error managed to dodge it. “And I see what your plan is. You want to feed us to this creature. Tell me how to stop it!”</p><p>“I don’t know!” The destroyer was backing away.</p><p>“What does he look like?!” Ink attacked.</p><p>“I don’t know!” He dodged a splash of ink.</p><p>“What <em> is </em> he?!” The paintbrush swung in an arc.</p><p>“I don’t know!!!” Error fell.</p><p>“Do you know <em> anything</em>?!” Ink pushed Error into the ground with his paintbrush.</p><p>Error recalled the way his Ink described that creature: “He has many faces. The Ink of my Multiverse said that Dream saw a Dream in him, and Blue saw himself as well.”</p><p>“And you?”</p><p>“...I saw you.”</p><p>Ink shuddered. He stepped away from his defeated enemy and slowly headed towards his friends and the one-armed black skeleton.</p><p>“We’re going to find and destroy him. And you better stay out of our way.”</p><p>All of them left through an inky portal, leaving Error alone in the dying world. So he did the only thing he could do: tried again and again to get out — but all of his portals remained nothing more than useless props. The alarming feeling of impending doom had left him, and now he was filled with the panic of a creature thrashing in agony. Whatever was happening beyond the limits of this world, it had to be terrifying.</p><p>“And here I am, a prisoner once again. What does it matter that I get to see the story repeat itself if I can’t do anything about it? Hah! And this isn’t the first time it’s happened. First, I saw Chara commit genocide over and over and over again. So I tried to do something about it — and found myself in the Save Screen. Then I tried to do something again — and ended up as a destroyer of worlds. And every time I try I find myself in a new shitty situation to deal with…</p><p>“Hey, Voices! Maybe I should just quit trying? Give up? Stop? Quit breathing right this moment? Voices?”</p><p>The Voices remained silent, as if They weren’t there anymore. Perhaps, They’d lost interest in this dying Multiverse and relocated to a new one.</p><p>Something changed then. Something happened that defined the fate of this Multiverse.</p><p>Error realized that he couldn’t just stop. He had to try — even if that ended up in another misadventure.</p><p>“Fine! You can keep giving me the silent treatment if You want! And I have to… try. maybe I’ll die. But maybe something good will come of it.”</p><p>He destroyed the world he was in, hoping he’d die and wouldn’t have to see the results of the confrontation between the guardians and that creature. Instead of death’s embrace, he was met by the overcrowded Omega Timeline.</p><p>Millions — or maybe billions — of alternatives screamed in terror and tried to escape, and somewhere out there, behind their backs, hovered the all-devouring rift. Error spotted  the guardians and his own copy nearby. They were trying to hold onto the pieces of reality, but their fates were already sealed. By the time Error got to the place he saw them, they didn’t exist anymore.</p><p>He once again felt the awful weight pressing down upon him as his strength abandoned him, and again he saw himself in this creature, then Ink, then blue, Dream, himself — and once again he saw Ink. A black hole in the shape of a living being. And this being… it didn’t have a face, but Error thought that it looked surprised by his presence.</p><p>Error unleashed his whole power upon it: all of his strings, all of his blasters, all of his bones — and… nothing happened. All of his attacks simply vanished inside its body. He had nothing to offer against this beast.</p><p>It was stupid, but Error held his arms out wide, as if this childish gesture was capable of stopping the merciless beast.</p><p>The beast shook its head. The Multiverse continued to vanish inside its body, and soon nothing remained of it — not even a void.</p><p>Error once again felt himself being chopped apart only for his pieces to be shoved through a keyhole. And then he once again found himself surrounded by the living darkness. The amalgamation cheerfully reached its grabby hands towards him but paused, scared by the creature standing next to its coveted prey.</p><p>The abyss itself was staring into the one who saw everything die twice.</p><p>Error was trying to stay standing. Fury flared inside his soul.</p><p>“You took everyone!” he roared. “Take me as well!” he demanded, coming closer. The aura of this creature was suffocating, but he didn’t dare stop. He finally fell down a couple of steps away from it. “Take me as well. Please.”</p><p>Error was waiting for his life to end — perhaps, painfully but for good — yet the creature strolled right by him.</p><p>Desperate to know the answer, the destroyer cried: “Why are you doing this?” Then he realized what he’d just said and laughed like a madman. He’d been asked this very question before as well, and just like this creature, he never answered. And now here he was, asking someone else the same thing. Life was the embodiment of irony.</p><p>“I’m going to find you!” Error shouted at the leaving figure. “You hear?! I’ll keep following you until you tell me why!”</p><p>Nothing looked back at him. He seemed to accept the destroyer’s vow.</p><p>Something changed then. The darkness lost any interest in Error and pulled its paws in. The new wayfarer trudged after the leaving beast of infinity.</p>
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